A video screenshot from WFMJ shows where the bridge was spliced from its foundation.

Courtesy WFMJ

It's one of the strangest – and most unwieldy – thefts we've
ever come across. Police in a small western Pennsylvania town are
searching for a missing steel bridge.
Salvaging scrap metal is nothing new. But most thieves go for easy
targets like piping, gutters and even manhole covers. A 50-foot-long
bridge made of impossibly heavy steel doesn't quite fit into that same
category. But some enterprising criminals managed to haul away the
bridge from North Beaver Township, Pa., about 50 miles northeast of
Pittsburgh.

The 40-ton bridge, tucked away on an access road at an industrial
park in the sparsely populated area near the Ohio border, isn't very
heavily trafficked. But its disappearance is obvious, not least because
it's worth an estimated $100,000.
The most likely scenario is that the thieves used a blowtorch to cut
apart the bridge and haul it away. New Castle Development, who owns the
property, remembers the bridge being there on Sept. 27. But sometime in
the past 10 days, it disappeared. New Castle Development spokesman Gary
Bruce told WFMJ, "I thought that with the rain it got washed away."
But that's quite a tall tale for the bridge that's been standing
since the early 1900s. The bridge was lifted off its foundation, marks
visible where the metal was ripped from its supports. "Its old beams are
probably hundreds and hundreds of pounds per foot," Robert Obed, who
lives in the area, told WTAE.
But metal thefts aren't uncommon in the area. Coincidentally enough,
the bridge was recently closed because of copper thefts nearby.